Management of Diversity in Organization
Abstract
Organizations have been becoming increasingly diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. This diversity brings substantial potential benefits such as better decision making, greater creativity and innovation, and more successful marketing to different types of customers. But, increasing cultural differences within a workforce also bring potential costs in higher turnovers, interpersonal conflicts, and communicational breakdowns. The utilities of diversity training and the essential managerial skills required for effectively managing diversity will also be discussed.
Diversity Management vs. Organizational Performance
Diversity of skills among individual members will
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Research tends to support this relationship. Kanter's study of innovation in organizations revealed that the most innovative companies deliberately establish heterogeneous teams to "create a marketplace of ideas, recognizing that a multiplicity of points of view needs to be brought to bear on a problem". Kanter also specifically noted that companies high on innovation had done a better job than most on eradicating racism, sexism, and classism, in addition, tended to employ more women and racioethnic minorities than less innovative companies.
Research by Charlene J. Nemeth found that minority views can stimulate consideration of non-obvious alternatives in task groups. Nemeth found that the "minority" groups adopted multiple strategies and identified more solutions than the "majority" groups. She concluded that the groups exposed to minority views were more creative than the more homogeneous, majority groups. She further concluded that persistent exposure to minority viewpoints stimulates creative thought processes. Another experiment compared the creativity of teams that were homogeneous on a series of attitude measures against teams with heterogeneous attitudes. Problem solution creativity was judged on originality and practicality. Results indicated that as long as the team members had similar ability levels, the heterogeneous teams were more creative than the homogeneous ones. If
Diversity is a wonderful asset to an organization and brings with it many benefits. Employees bring in their own personal experiences and knowledge to the team (Burns & Kerby, 2012). Having diverse teams allows for the possibility to fix a problem or perfect a process by using different employee’s experiences and past knowledge to find solutions. A diverse workforce can drive economic growth and capture a greater share of the consumer market (Burns & Kerby, 2012). With diversity as a core value, the recruitment pool is widened to find the most qualified candidate and reduces employee turnover as a result. An organization can be highly competitive with a diversity initiative by adapting to a changing environment (Burns & Kerby, 2012).
The purpose of this paper is designed to introduce, educate, and promote diversity within your company. Your company will be shown the merits of diversity and how diversity within your organization can be a benefit. This paper will be broken down into three main areas: Benefits of Diversity, Challenges of Diversity, and Recommendations for an effective diversity within your organization..
Diversity is what makes people different, not just culturally but in human differences. Having a multitude of differences in the workforce gives an organization the ability to use many ideas to reach a common goal. A person could say that a diverse group of people together in one room can accomplish greater achievements than a room filled with the same types of individuals. Managers understand the concept of diversity, and how important diversity is to the success of a company’s ability to implement programs that continue to develop a harmonious and diverse workplace. The recognition that diversity is a reality in the workforce has generated an enormous amount of activity over the years among leaders in business, government, and civil
Workforce diversity has enabled organisation to gain competitive advantage in terms of improving service, effective organisational culture and employee satisfaction (Bradetitch, Rahman, Reynolds, 2013). However, the success rate of diversity training is dependent on the level of engagement and commitment of the management and the employees as the nature of the global economy have reversed the homogenous society to become the heterogeneous trend (Willard, 2003, Mor-Barak, 2005).
In the recent past, there has been a tremendous research that has been conducted to study the unexplained relationship that exists between team diversity and team outcomes. On the other hand the effect of team diversity on the outcomes of the team and the important characteristics which impact this relationship are still unanswered. There has been tremendous work done to analyze and answer the unanswered questions how and why there is such a huge impact. Why are huge firms taking chances between the innovation team size and the level of diversity?(Krebs, 2006. )
Workforce diversity is not a transient phenomenon; it is today's reality, and it is here to stay (Barak, 2013). A successful entity must provided a tool for cultures integration for its employees. Therefore Diversity training is important part of successful management. The most important components of an effective training diversity training are support of the organization. Training can be put out, but the company management level must also endorsed the training. The critical information that must be included in the training is respect of other differences. The attitude of the trainer can directly impact the attitude of the trainees on receptive of the information put out. If the trainees understand
Both teams were diversified in terms of age, gender and race, but the first team had more education than the second one due the functionality of this team. Diversity can be divided into two different types: easily visible, surface-level diversity (age, gender) and less easily visible, deep-level diversity (values, attitudes) (Bell, 2007). Bell (2007) suggests that deep-level variables have a stronger effect on team performance. All members
It is important that the issue is addressed since having a diverse workplace has it’s many benefits. Recent studies have shown that groups of diverse problems solvers are more likely to outperform high-ability problem solvers. According Harvard Business School, multicultural networks also promote creative thinking (Walter, 2014, para. 1). Diversity always for more innovative solutions to business problems, which is one of ways it can benefit the company, and there for is an essential issue to address and solve.
With these factors in consideration, including expanded immigration, it is very apparent to today 's modern corporation that change and inclusion of diversity is needed to survive. Diversity is the "new norm" and must be utilized to its fullest potential in order to succeed. “Maximizing and capitalizing on workplace diversity has become an important issue for management today” (Green, Lopez, Wysocki, & Kepner, 2012). Consumers of goods and services today are not just using local sources. We are part of a global economy and having a diverse workforce with the ability to share ideas, language, cultural insights and basic needs analysis goes a long way toward business success in this type of economy.
As a result, companies, that utilize the competencies of diverse individuals, are able to drastically outperform their peers. A study prepared by McKinsey also discovered that companies “with more diverse workforces perform better financially (as cited in Hunt, Layton & Prince, 2015).” The report stated that ethnically diverse companies are 35 percent more likely to financially outperform their competitors who are in the bottom quartile for diversity (Hunt, Layton & Prince, 2015). The financial returns that the companies in the top quartile receive are a product of their ability to implement diversity in their corporate culture. These extremely successful companies “are better able to win top talent and improve their customer orientation, employee satisfaction, and decision making” due to their understanding of the importance of employing multicultural individuals. As a result, employers should hire a diverse workforce, as it is proven to increase their financial performance. This greatly impacts employers, as they will have the opportunity to invest that additional capital back into their business. In order to achieve results such as these, human resource management will be accountable for recruiting, training and expanding the talent pool of the most competent and diverse individuals (Dessler, Chhinzer & Cole, 64). The human resource department must also be able to manage the talent of their employees
Diversity in the workplace has been a very knowledgeable course in which sometimes I have been challenged on my own thought process and beliefs. As I move forward in my studies and life I plan to expand my awareness of recognize my own ethnocentricities and respect the benefits of other cultures diverse values and behaviors. As I make the move into management I plan on applying what I have learned about diversity management and how as stated in (Canas & Sondak, 2014)creates not only a competitive advantage in consumer markets but an environment in which differences are “valued and allowed to influence positively [organizational members’] experience in and contribution to the work of the organization. Looking back on my research paper when deciding what company to choose my audit for I found each company has the same concept that would be they could change the world through diversity in the workplace. I plan on taking this business belief and applying it to my company and show the success that it has brought to other companies.
Needs, values, priorities of employees and employers have changed dramatically over the last decade. On all levels of the corporate ladder, men and women are seeking new ways to manage the time they spend working so they can spend more time living. In the boardrooms, executives are seeking ways to attract - and retain - the best employees so they can continue to survive and thrive in a highly competitive global economy. As companies are becoming more and more diverse it is becoming more and more important for companies to understand and manage diversity. The people of different background, races, religion creates diverse workforce. There is an importance of having diverse workforce to provide better performance. There are perspectives of
Historically, diversity in the workplace was seen as an employment equity issues. As the years passed by, it all changed. The surge of globalization has needed the collaboration among people of different backgrounds and cultures. Nowadays, organizations are now creating a diverse workforce beyond just gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. Many U.S. organizations are embracing women, ethnic minorities, and foreign-born employees more than ever before in history. Diversity calls for organizations to recognize individuals for themselves, regardless their designated groups. This paper will be focusing in three different parts of diversity in the workforce: type of organizations, the benefits & cost, and measurements taken by CEOs to promote diversity.
There are a number of advantages/benefits to utilizing diverse teams within an organization. One advantage would be that coworkers with diverse backgrounds bring distinctive experiences and insight to the table in gatherings and work groups (Ingram, 2017). However, it is not only the different types of expertise people bring to the task. They also have distinct personalities and different ways of approaching and solving problems. Moreover, the way the traits are applied can be as important as combined technical knowledge (Wilde, 2010). Take age for instance, these experiences could be from personal involvements one has had during the course of their working years as well as life experiences given the person’s age. A person’s ethnic background could also bring unique experiences.
4. Creativity argument – diversity of perspectives and less emphasis on conformity to norms of the past (which characterize the modern approach to management of diversity) should improve the level of creativity.